Planning is the first step of the town-planning activity and it becomes concretised in the planning instruments, which decide and projects the kind of use of the land and of the constructions, across the diferent typology of Urban and Country Planning, being the PGOU (General Local Planning) the most relevant figure. Other types of territorial planification (Territorial Action Plan, Partial Plan, Plan of Interior Reform, Special Plan, Catalogues, Programmes and Studies of Detail) are, in certain way, redundant. In fact, a small or medium Municipality can spend years without proceeding with a single Plan of the stated ones.

Whereas, the PGOU is essential so that a Municipality could carry out a normal planning development activity. One of the qualities of a PGOU should be to clear the future horizon of the municipal town-planning development, trying to establish directly the detailed planning (new streets and roads, location of the green zones, public equipments, etc) of at least, the most immediate zone to the villages. Nevertheless, in the last years we have observed how Town Planners and the politicians responsible for the municipal management (those who decide about it, after all) just take the easy solution to postpone the detailed planning to later instruments (plans of interior reform, partial plans, etc ...) forming this way a not coherent territorial development and at the expense of the political situation of each moment, keeping in suspense, on tenterhooks, to the owners of the land affected by the lack of definition of the general plans. It is an observable fact that the easy solution is to planificate just the essential areas, delimiting big sectors of developmnet land, in the hope that  private developers will present to their approval proposals of planning and management (by means of PAIs,  in competition with other developers, to solve the problems that the planners did not do when they could and they should when making the General Local Planning), whose approval or refusal will depend on the criteria or interests of the ruling politicians in each moment and, which is worse, of the technicians who hire for their advice, and of whose favorable or unfavorable reports will depend that selection of a technical alternative or other one, creating this way an easily corruptible environment.

 The PGOU is the instrument that fixes the strategy of town-planning evolution in the long term of the municipality and the process of occupation of the land. The proper scope of the PGOU is the whole territory of the municipality, say,  must include the whole municipal district, without even a single square meter unclassified.

The PGOU has indefinite validity, nevertheless it must foresee the urban expansion of the municipality for 10 years, including the reservation of land and equipments for the implantation of foreseeable infrastructures in longer term.

The PGOU documents are public, including Planning Rules, Building Rules and listed buildings, and therefore any person has the right, at all times, to consult it, find out and obtain copy in the Town Council.

Determinations of the PGOU

The PGOU establishes for the whole municipal territory the structural and detailed planification. In the structural planning it is the Valencian Government the one that has the final say for its definitive approval; on the other hand, in the detailed planning it is the town Council who has the final say to approve it definitively. For this reason, when the allocation of an element is decided be included into the Primary Network (Structural Planning) or into the Secondary Network (Detailed Planning) of Public Equipments, is prefigured the later scheme of competences for possible  future modifications.

Structural Planning

The Structural Planning of the PGOU refers to the determinations that serve to give coherence to the territory, say, the Definitory Guidelines of the strategy of urban evolution and occupation of the territory,   Classification of the land, Qualification or zoning of uses,  Planning of the Not Development Land,  Primary network of reservations for Public Equipments,  Planning of the civic centers and of the activities capable of generating intense transit, and, most importantly, Guidelines for the instruments of development of the PGOU, indicating his targets, the criteria for the delimitation of new sectors or zones of planning, the criteria that should guarantee a sequential development, as well as the criteria for the delimitation of the Areas of Share-out of betterments and charges between the owners and the determination of the Average Use.

Regard of the Development Land (Suelo Urbanizable), The PGOU only  establishes the criteria to which its planning must fit, including the delimitation of sectors, and the logical sequence of urban development determining by means of the detailed establishment of the objective conditions that have to be fulfilled so that its incorporation to the global context of the territory is possible, defining this way a basic order of priorities and regulating the conditions that they have to respect.

Regard of the Urban Land contains the criteria, targets and strategies for its planning. It can contain the delimitation of the urban land in one or more sectors for its Planning by means of Plans of Interior Reform.

Regard of the delimitation of the Areas of Share-out, only establishes the ways in which they must be fixed by the instruments of partial planning, differing the correspondents to the urban land of those of the development land and the compensation coefficients between uses and typologies.

Detailed Planning

The Detailed Planning is that one that does not have structural character, and it can be arranged in the PGOU, but in the practice only it is detailed planned what exists already in the reality in urban land, and for the development land  its determination is postponed to the future partial plans (by means of a PAI).

The Detailed Planning includes all the determinations that order in a precise way and in grade of detail the municipal territory, as Delimitation of sectors or areas for partial planning, Delimitation of the Units of Execution or minimal areas of autonomous execution with technical feasibility, Delimitation of the Areas of Share-out of betterments and charges derived from the planning, Fixation of the objective, subjective and average uses, establishment of the secondary network of reservations of land for future public equipments, Fixation of streets alignments and gradients,  Regulation of the building conditions, etc.  The power for its definitive approval corresponds to the Town Council.

Documents of the PGOU

The PGOU includes the following documents:

Documents without normative efficacy: informative Memory, information Plans  and justificatory Memory.

Documents with normative efficacy: Strategic Guidelines of Urban Evolution and Occupation of the Territory, Planning Rules, Plans and Catalogue of listed  buildings and protected areas.